Bertha pursued her way along the tortuous bridlepath with thoughts which resembled the way she travelled. Like the road, her fancy seemed to turn back upon itself pretty often and yet in the main it held in the same direction. Of course, fighting was a brutal business to a girl’s way of thinking, but then, when she came really to think of it; men were strange creatures altogether, half terribly glorious and half contemptible. Lane had endured all these injuries simply and merely because he loved her! She could have no conception of the possibilities of masculine joy in a fight for its own sake, or of the masculine sense of honour which compelled the meeting of a challenge half-way. Of course it was mightily unpleasant to be talked about, as the heroine of such a business. The village tongues had been busy, and would never altogether stop wagging for the remainder of her lifetime.

The influence of long years of respect for Thistle-wood seemed to turn her mental steps backward now and then. That so quiet and retired a man, and so little given to proclaiming himself should have made the most sacred wishes of his heart a matter of common gossip was understandable only on one hypothesis. His love and his despair carried him out of himself. That, of course, was a daring thing for any girl to think, but then Bertha was bound to find reasons.

Mainly, her mind was occupied in the reconstruction of her previous belief about Lane Protheroe. He also, it would seem, had manly qualities in him—could stand up to be beaten in the cause of the woman he loved. The blows hurt her so, in the mere fancy of them, that she more than once put up her hands to her face to guard it. By the time she had accomplished her errand, and was on the way back to her father’s farmhouse, she was all tenderness and forgiveness and admiration for the newly-revealed Lane, but then, as the fates would have it, just as she began to think of her cruelty to him, and of the terribly low spirits into which she must have thrown him, the familiar jocund whistle broke upon her ears, and when she stood still in a dreary amaze at this, she could hear the steps of the lover, who ought to have been altogether love-lorn, marching along in something very like a dance in time to his own music. What was one to think of such a man? She was back in a moment to her old opinion of him. No rooted feeling in him—no solidity—nothing to be sure of!

She made haste home, and there shut herself in her own room and cried. Her mother walked upstairs, and finding the girl thus mournfully engaged, sat down tranquilly beside her and produced her knitting. The click of the needles had an effect of commonplace which helped to restore Bertha to her self-possession, and in a little time her tears ceased, and moving to the window she stood there looking out upon the landscape. The monotonous click of the needles ceased, and she knew that her mother had laid down her work in her lap and was regarding her. She turned, with a ghost of a smile.

‘You’re thinkin’, no doubt, as you’re full o’ trouble, my wench,’ began the mother, ‘and it’s no manner o’ use in talkin’ to young folks to try an’ mek out as a thing as pains don’t hurt. But if you can only bring ‘em t’ understand as it won’t hurt much by and by, you’ve done summat for ‘em, may be. What’s the trouble, wench? Come an’ tell thy mother.’

‘It’s all over now, mother,’ said Bertha

‘Not it,’ returned Mrs. Fellowes, ‘nor won’t be yet a while. Beesn’t one as cries for nothing, like most gells. I was niver o’ that kind myself.’

Bertha would not, perhaps could not, make a confidante even of her mother in this matter, but Mrs. Fellowes had a remarkable faculty for striking human averages, and she got near the truth in her guesses.

‘There’s one thing fixed and sure, my dear,’ she said, ‘and that is as follows: ayther you must find a mind to wed one of ‘em, or you must pluck up a spirit and tell ‘em you’ll wed nayther.’

‘I have told Mr. Thistlewood that I can never marry him,’ said Bertha.

‘And what about Lane?’ her mother asked her.

‘I can never marry him either,’ the girl answered steadily. She had her voice under perfect control, but her averted face and the very lines of her figure enlightened the shrewd old mother.

‘Hast told him so?’ she asked.

‘I have told him,’ Bertha answered, ‘never to speak to me again.’

‘Hoity, toity, deary me!’ cried the old woman. ‘And what says he to that?’

‘He didn’t greatly seem to care,’ said Bertha, with a beautifully assumed air of indifference.

‘Maybe he didn’t set such store by what you told him as to tek it in earnest?’

‘Oh,’ said the girl, languidly and indifferently, ‘he knew I meant it.’

‘And didn’t seem to care? My dear, you’re talkin’ of Lane Protheroe!’

‘He cared for a minute, perhaps,’ Bertha said, her assumed indifference and languor tinctured with bitterness by this time. ‘He cared for a minute, perhaps; just as he does about everything. I heard him whistling an hour afterwards.’

The disguise was excellent, and might have deceived a woman who had known her less intimately and watched her less closely, but it was transparent to the mother.

‘That’s the trouble, is it?’ said Mrs. Fellowes, gravely betaking herself once more to her knitting. Bertha had been crying already, and had hard work to restrain herself. ‘Look here, my darlin’,’ the mother said, with unwonted tenderness of tone and manner, ‘if you can’t read your own mind, you must let a old experienced woman read it for you. The lad’s as the Lord made him. What we see in any o’ the men to mek a fuss about, the Lord in His mercy only knows; but, to my mind, Lane’s ‘the pick o’ ten thousand. He’s alive, and that’s more than can be said of many on ‘em. He’s a clever lad, he’s well to look at, and he’s well-to-do.’

‘Mother,’ cried the girl, almost passionately, her own pain wrung her so, ‘he has no heart. He cares for a thing one minute, and doesn’t care for it the next. He pretends—no, he doesn’t pretend—but he thinks he cares, and while he thinks it I suppose he does care. But out of sight is out of mind with him.’

‘Makest most o’ thine own troubles, like the rest on us,’ said Mrs. Fellowes philosophically. But, in a moment, philosophy made way for motherly kindness, and, rising from her seat, she bestowed her knitting in a roomy pocket and put her arms about her daughter’s waist. ‘Art fond of the lad all the same,’ she said. ‘Ah, my dear, there’s nothin’ likely to be sorer than the natur as picks flies in the things it’s fond on. There’s a deal o’ laughin’ at them as thinks all their geese is swans, but they’re better off in the long run than them as teks all their swans to be geese.’

Bertha said nothing, but she trembled a little under the caress, and her mother, observing this, released her, went back to her chair, and once more drew forth her knitting.

‘I reckon,’ she said, after a pause, ‘as John Thistlewood’s had the spoiling of thee. Thee’st got to think so much o’ them bulldog ways of his’n, that nothin’ less ‘ll be of use to any man as comes a-courtin’.’

‘Don’t talk about it any more, mother,’ said Bertha, with an air of weary want of interest. ‘I have said good-bye to both of them.’

And there the interview ended.